THE Federal Government has abrogated import levies on rice, textiles and sugar, ports terminal charges and plant hire charges. Government has also announced 30 per cent reduction in tariff charges, fees and fines by all regulatory agencies at the ports.
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, who made these known on Tuesday in Abuja, said that the Federal Government had concluded plans to appoint auditors to probe allegations of malpractices in the issuance of waivers to some companies by the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Dr. Usman, who spoke while briefing newsmen on the report of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on 48-hour cargo clearance from Nigerian ports, said that the committee’s report had already been adopted by the Federal Executive Council.
He said based on the allegations, auditors would be appointed to actually audit all the waivers that had been given and if any company or any individual was found to have abused those waivers, necessary disciplinary or legal action would be taken against such.
He said “In fact part of the delay in the appointment of the auditors was some small delay we had with the Due Process Office and the mechanism to be used. All that have been cleared and the auditors would be appointed to audit all waivers and exemptions given from 1999 to the time we took over.”
He stressed that the audit would be carried out and “if any company is found to have done anything wrong, they must face the consequences.” The minister explained that when the suspension of waivers was announced, it was stated that what President Umaru Yar’Adua did was to suspend the issuance of any new waivers, adding, “but because we didn’t want any controversy, the position was taken that any validly given waiver as at that time was still valid. So it was not a cancellation of existing waivers but the suspension of the issuance of the new ones.”
On the 48-hour cargo clearance, he said that already a committee to monitor and implement all the recommendations of the Inter-Ministerial Committee would be inaugurated next week. He added, however, that many of the recommendations had already been implemented or were being implemented. For example, he said “when we started, a rough check indicated that it took about 28 days to clear goods at the Nigerian ports. We are down to about 12 days and 12 days is still not even good enough; our target is 48 hours.”
To this end, he announced that because of the multiplicity of agencies at the ports, the Federal Government had decided to reduce the number of the agencies from 15 to five. He said the agencies allowed to be at the ports were Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control, Standards Organisation of Nigeria and NAQS.
He added that other agencies might be invited when the need arises. This, according to him, was to reduce the cumbersome procedure and bottleneck associated with clearance of goods at the ports. The minister added that all these efforts were to ensure greater and more efficient trade facilitation and subsequent tremendous benefits to the economy considering the challenges of power and other infrastructure in the country.